


if i wait (will you stay?)

by Callioope



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Post-Scarif, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-11-11 13:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11149401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callioope/pseuds/Callioope
Summary: She’d made the decision then, when he’d leaned down towards her, so close she could see his eyelashes, and she leaned up towards him, so close to feeling like she belonged. She’d made the decision with the conviction she used to have, before Saw abandoned her in a bunker.#Just after Scarif, Jyn waits for Cassian to wake and debates whether she'll stay.





	1. the week after

**Author's Note:**

> Yea, idk, everyone wrote these "waking up after Scarif" fics back when it first came out or whenever? So this is like a little late? But the idea came to me the other day and I just wrote it. So anyways. Here's my take.
> 
> I was gonna tag it slow burn bc this is all about Cassian and Jyn taking their time, but it's only gonna be three short chapters so that didn't really make sense. I plan on finishing this over the weekend, should be short. (Knock on wood.)

 

 

 

_Jyn_

 

It’s three days before she sees him again.

Three days of exhaustion, stiff aches, and numb dizziness. (They call it healing.)

Three days of wondering, wanting, and waiting. (They call it hope.)

Three days until she’s allowed out of bed and granted clearance to see him: because he’s hurt enough for special treatment, because he’s important enough to warrant a private room and security, and because a certain someone doesn’t trust her enough or blames her for what happened or just downright doesn’t like her.

But even Davits Draven has to answer to someone.

On the third day after she wakes from Scarif, Mon Mothma gives her access to Cassian’s room.

She sees him and her breath hitches. Her eyes close and what she sees now is his body falling, what she hears is the sound of him hitting that metal beam, what she feels is her own grip loosening.

She opens her eyes and listens to the beep of the machines around her and clutches his hand.

“ _Your father would be proud._ ”

Surrounded by memories and the threat of a new ghost in her life, she flees.

#

She paces in the hangar. In order to see him, she’d made certain promises, certain commitments to Mothma, but she suspects she still has time to wiggle out of them. If she has to. If she must.

She counts the ships around her, catalogs them. Wonders what kind of ship they might give her. Mothma had promised her freedom from the start. Mothma had said, “ _I won’t forget what we did to you._ ” Mothma would understand.

Her feet navigate to a familiar part of the hangar, and when she recognizes it she kicks a crate, “ _Welcome home_ ,” echoing in her brain. She ignores the odd looks that collect around her and stomps her way out, onto the tarmac, towards the jungle.

She’d made the decision then, when he’d leaned down towards her, so close she could see his eyelashes, and she leaned up towards him, so close to feeling like she belonged. She’d made the decision with the conviction she used to have, before Saw abandoned her in a bunker.

And she still wants to fight. She’d done her part on Scarif, but the Death Star isn’t gone, and destroying it will only be the beginning. There is so much left to be done.

But until then, she can only wait.

Reaching the edge of the trees, she screams out into them. Something nearby screeches in return.

She returns to his bedside.

#

It takes another three days. Three days of hovering medical droids, bacta baths, surgeries. She doesn’t wait by his side the whole time, having obligations to fulfill (ceremonial duties, briefings; she grounded herself, when she committed to Mothma’s agreement).

She’s told that he’s woken, but he never seems to be awake when she is there. She sits by his side anyways, reading her datapad, her feet tapping, her soul itching, her heart reminding her to wait.

The problem is that she doesn’t know. She’s grown numb from losing people, from watching them go, and always they were people who promised to stay. People who had been part of home. Mama, papa, Saw. He’s promised her home, but who is she to him? Not family; are they even friends? She’s known him—well. He’s spent as much time unconscious as conscious, since she met him, and what can she say of the time they spent together?

His face is blank now, though not the same as his spy face. Asleep, his expression is soft and peaceful. For someone whose job requires a level of guardedness, he’s shared a number of expressions with her: anger after Eadu, hope in the hangar, trust on the trip to Scarif and— _something_ —in the lift.

Somewhere distant on the base, rebels cheer on Luke Skywalker and an impossible shot, but she’s honed in on Cassian’s soft breathing.

He mutters something unintelligible, and she can't explain why (or maybe she just won’t), but the sound of his voice comes over her like a balm, and for the first time in a week, after whatever treatment the med droids had deemed necessary, this is what heals her.

Jyn has made the decision to stay several times over: when she first saw him laying there unconscious, panicked, and came back; when she woke up after Scarif; maybe even when he said “welcome home,” and all of these were contingent on his being there.

But now. Now he stirs before her and something brews deep within her, something strong and so terrifying she believes for just a moment that she will run after all, that she can’t bear to carry such a feeling knowing it could be taken away.

“Jyn,” he says, clearly this time, and he seals it. She’s tied to the rebellion forever.

“You're still here,” he adds, after a moment.

 _Of course I am. You promised me a home_ , she wants to say, but the words hide in her chest.

“Yea,” she says. “I'm still here.”

 

 

_Cassian_

 

He looks up at her, at once surprised and also not. She's beautiful, her hair a mess from her fingers running through it, her eyes bright as they meet his. For a second, he sees escape run across her face, but then she surprises him again and takes his hand.

If he could be her anchor, he would, but that seems too much to offer.

“You're still here,” he says. Her face pinches in mild affront, but her voice is soft when she answers.

“Yea. I’m still here.”

He understands: why he kept going back for her, why he recruited a team for her, why he followed her to Scarif. He understands: his need to know she’s okay as they cross the Jedha desert, his compulsion to rise after falling, his hope for a future that wasn’t to be. _There wasn’t the time_.

He has the time.

He stares up at her and wants to reach out, wants to embrace her, wants to kiss her. But she’s far away and he’s too weak, and anyways, he saw that look in her eyes as he woke. She balances on her conviction, toeing the line between unwavering devotion to the cause and the fear of drowning in it. She knows the stakes and what she has to lose. Jyn Erso was never apathetic; she simply felt too much and had to shield herself from it. He’d seen it on her face after Jedha.

Too many people had disappointed her.

He couldn’t push her.

He wouldn’t do anything she couldn’t bear.

She entwines their fingers and he holds firm, and that is all.


	2. the month after

 

 

_Jyn_

 

Later, she’ll remember the month after Scarif in a blur of assorted scenes:

 

(1) The chaos of the post-Death Star celebration: smiles on generic faces, wide smiles, laughing smiles, she’s never seen so many teeth bared in actual happiness ever before; strangers embracing, arms draped over shoulders, arms wrapping tightly around chests, arms lifting and swinging some other soul in the air; and the sheer noise of hollers, shouts, and songs. Joy dances around her, and now that Cassian is awake, now that she can visit him and hear his voice and see his grin, she lets her own loose.

Someone, a boy with tousled blond hair and bright blue eyes, finds her lingering in the hangar, perched on a crate in her spot, watching everything. He takes her arms and says, “It was you? You’re the one who stole the plans?”

She shrugs. Says something noncommittal. Says something about the Rogue One team.

He answers with a wider grin and a hug, and she tunes out his excited babbling. She’s gathered that he’s the one who took her father’s secret and made it worth something. Luke Skywalker.

Her grin fades a little and she nods and excuses herself by mumbling something about checking on Cassian.

 

(2) The chaos of leaving Yavin 4: empty boxes, filled boxes; carts rattling from behind, carts cutting across paths, carts disappearing into ships; strung out workers directing ships out of the hangar and up into the sky, waving glowsticks forever burned into her mind.

Hugs accompanied by tears of joy become hugs accompanied by tears of goodbye. Though some parts of the rebellion will remain together, others will disperse across the galaxy, already moving on to new missions.

Still tied to the agreement she made with Mothma, and short on items of her own to pack, she’s quickly roped into supply detail in the medbay: cataloging equipment, running errands for doctors and droids, following their instructions.

It’s tedious and mind-numbing, and the urgency to leave base as soon as possible demands speed along with accuracy.

It just may be the worst job she’s ever had.

“You don’t have to be here,” Cassian says, as he watches her heave armfuls of unidentified medical equipment into a storage bin. She’s supposed to be marking it down to keep track of it. Under his gaze, she sighs and picks up her datapad, checks off a few items.

“This is my assignment,” she says, turning around and moving to the next closet.

He sits on the closest bed, his cane resting against it, and says nothing but keeps watching her.

She wonders precisely what he means. She doesn’t have to be here in the medbay? Here on Yavin 4? With the rebellion at all?

Instead of asking, instead of thinking too long about it, she dumps another load of supplies into the crate and this time carefully counts and checks each item off her list.

“Why?” he finally says.

She flicks her bangs out of her face and forces herself to look at him. This is a mistake. She looks away again, back at the datapad, and shrugs.

“Jyn.”

This time she glares at him.

“Don’t you want to fight?”

She very nearly tosses her datapad at him for that, and somehow instead siphons her anger into another sigh.

“I’m grounded,” she says, turning back to the datapad, clutching it a little too tightly, jabbing the screen a little too forcefully. “For, you know, Scarif.”

“But you weren’t officially part of the rebellion then.” He pauses. “And they haven’t…”

They haven’t punished him, is what he doesn’t say. At least, they won’t court-martial him. She’s sure he’ll have his own tedious assignments, once the medical droids release him. She’s sure Draven will run him through his own gauntlet.

She hasn’t explained everything yet: the deal she made with Mothma. She owes a month of service in exchange for having access to Cassian’s room, in exchange for the rebellion sweeping their insubordination under the rug, for retroactively claiming it was a secret, sanctioned mission. For making sure Cassian won’t get in too much trouble.

“Need to prove myself, I guess,” she mutters, and the third pile of supplies clatters into the crate a little more loudly.

For some reason, the truth won’t leave her mouth. It balls up in her throat and her tongue twists over the words and says something else instead.

She finishes the task and excuses herself. Her shift ends.

She runs her frustration out, circling the temple complex, skirting the jungle, breathing in the rotten stench and melting in the humidity. It isn’t pleasant, but it is private.

Yes, she’d rather fight. She’d rather be somewhere out in the galaxy, shooting stormtroopers, blowing up Imperial facilities, sabotaging supply lines, serving a purpose more suited to her skills.

But she knows it’s worth it, to stay here. She reminds herself that it’s worth it. She reminds herself that it’s better than Wobani. That it’s better than other fates.

That doesn’t exactly make it easy.

 

(3) The abrupt end of chaos.

She breathes sterile air as she walks along narrow corridors, white walls pressing on either side. Lights gleam a little too brightly. Air ducts blow cool air with a supposedly quiet hum that instead occupies the silence with agitating vigor. Everywhere, the absence of other bodies, of frenzied movement, of sheer noise, spreads out like thick molasses, overtaking everything, catching in its wake thoughts she’d rather not contemplate.

The frigate travels through hyperspace and leaves Yavin 4 behind.

Supplies are properly restored to shelves and closets.

Ceremonial duties are long over.

Menial tasks give way to meetings that feel more like recruitment, meetings to analyze her skill sets, meetings to determine her future role in the rebellion.

She hurtles towards the end of her unofficial punishment, and even with little left to do, the time flows past her too quickly. She feels stuck, like a tree caught in the mud of a shallow river. Whenever her feet want to wander, she finds a bag to punch and kick, or a partner to spar, or a target to shoot.

It’s there, in the shooting range, that Cassian corners her. She’s just finished, feels like she’s expelled her agitation with every shot of her blaster, when she walks out the door into the hall and finds him standing there, leaning on his cane, the edges of his face tightened with his attempt to mask his exhaustion.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he says. A hesitant smile that seems so uncharacteristic on the face of a spy edges up one side of his face. Like he fears one wrong word will send her fleeing.

She’s seen it before. Which, actually, sometimes frustrates her the most.

She is not oblivious to the way he looks at her. Since Scarif, she’s seen him with others. Always professional, always calm, cool, collected. Around everyone, he wears that neutral spy face; even when he smiles, there's something held back about it. Except when he looks at her.

When he looks at her, she sees: a shy, half-smile (will you stay?); eyebrows lifted in concern (will you run?); soft eyes that keep his promise (welcome home).

_“As long as you're happy_ ,” papa whispers in her mind.

She knows what his face says, but she doesn't know what she wants. She dances around it (around him): some days spending long hours in his company, just talking, or helping him with his physical therapy, or rummaging through inventory logs to see if there are any abandoned droids they can upload K-2SO’s back up into; other days, she spends long hours avoiding him.

Today has been one of the latter.

“I’m going to see Mothma today.”

They start down the hall, towards the direction of high command. She follows without really wanting to.

“Oh?” she says.

“I was thinking,” he says, his words punctuated by the tapping of his cane. “About Scarif.”

She swallows. When she says nothing, he says nothing. So she takes the bait.

“Yea?”

“What are you going to do next?”

She doesn’t think these are exactly the words he was going to ask, but then, theirs is a dance for two, and they move closer and apart in sync, in rhythm.

“Mothma suggested the Pathfinders,” she admits, and it’s more than she’s given him in awhile. When they talk, they talk about the past or the minutiae of the present. They never talk about plans or the future.

He raises his eyebrows in surprise, and she finds herself wishing just once he’d put on his mask again around her.

She hasn’t had enough time. Just a month to figure it out, before she’ll be assigned to a fighting corps. A month to navigate whatever floats between them. A month to sort through feelings that she can no longer hide in the cave of her mind, with its destroyed hatch and illuminated walls.

“Is that what you want?”

“It sounds fitting.” She shrugs.

She won’t look at him. Just looks at the wall. Suddenly the blank panels give way to a large window. Instead of the blurred white lines of hyperspace, a massive gas giant fills the view, purples and blues and oranges swirling in stripes and ripples across its surface. Light from a distant sun illuminates the right half of the planet; a long shadow cuts across the wide array of rings on the left.

She stops. She’s not normally one to stop and ‘smell the flowers,’ so to speak, but it’s the most interesting view she’s seen since they left Yavin 4.

“Jyn,” he says, stopping beside her. Even now his eyes still watch her. She clenches her fist then relaxes it.

It’s a miracle they both survived Scarif. She’d been ready to die. She’d been ready to die on Wobani, before that. She’s had so many close calls throughout her life. She’s living on borrowed time.

And he’s a spy.

“I can’t go back to the work I was doing before,” he says softly, close to her ear. She senses that he’s finally turned to stare at the planet below. “I thought we worked well together.”

Her chest aches. She stares at a spot on the planet below, wondering how long it takes to move across its surface.

Against the rational argument of her mind, her heart moves her hand to take his. Already she regrets it, but for all her perceived impulsivity, she’s denied herself this desire for weeks.

“If I asked to form a special unit…”

She swallows again, and squeezes his hand tighter, and forces out words she’s guarded for too long. “You’d be denied.”

His head jerks back towards her. “How do you know that?”

Eyes wide, she looks up and meets his gaze. “It already came up.”

“When?”

“Just after Scarif.”

His eyes bore into her, as his thoughts race to catch up with her words and what they imply.

“You made a deal.” It’s not even a question.

She nods.

“For what?”

She can’t say it, she can’t say anything. She thinks of the elevator on Scarif and just looks at him.

He raises his hand slowly, giving her every chance to stop him, and touches her cheek. Her breath falters at the feel of his skin, his fingertips sliding through her hair. Her heart bests her brain yet again, and she closes her eyes and leans into his touch.

He knows now. He knows what it means.

“Captain Andor?”

She opens her eyes to watch his hand fall to his side. Further down the corridor, one of Mothma’s assistants approaches. They each take a step away.

“Mon Mothma is ready for you,” the assistant says, glancing between them.

“I’ll be right there.”

The assistant hesitates.

Cassian looks back at Jyn, opens his mouth to say something. After a pause, he says, “I’ll see you later, Jyn.”

She nods.

He continues forward with the assistant.

When the month is over, they’ll be separated.

And perhaps that’s for the better.

Whenever Cassian gets a chance to install Kay’s backup, the droid will tell them the odds. Neither of them are likely to see the end of the war. And the idea of just one of them surviving…

It’s not entirely that she fears he’ll leave her; that’s a familiar pain.

She thinks, maybe, she fears leaving him.

So it’s better to keep him at an arm’s distance. To not give in. To not think about the elevator on Scarif. To not imagine what could exist between them during peacetime.

_Maybe_ , she thinks. _Maybe if the war ends and we’re both still here._

Maybe he'll understand.


	3. the year after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. This came out much, much longer than I intended.

 

_Expectations:_

She will lose herself in fighting. Adrenaline flushes out thoughts, feelings, hopes. When she fights, she is her baton, she is her blaster, she is her breathing. Every strike is a beat, every bolt is a note, and she lets the music fill her head.

She will lose herself in planning. Dates, routes, names zig zag through her brain, coalesce into tactics and strategies. People listen to her, and though she doesn’t know why, she won’t waste an opportunity to make her own decisions. Skills, experience, stamina become part of a juggling act as she doles out orders she never thought she’d voice.

She will lose herself in exhaustion. Muscles (stretched, strained, squeezed) cramp throughout nights spent in narrow bunks. Mind weary from balancing facts, faces, fears, eyes blinking to stay awake just a minute longer as a soldier confides in her or as she chides another. She can barely keep herself awake, until she lays down in bed and somehow is too tired to sleep. She tosses and turns and eggs out a few minutes or hours here and there.

Through all of it, she’ll drown out the most persistent ache of her soul.

 

_Reality:_

No punches, kicks, swings, hits, fired shots, or thrown grenades can shake him from her thoughts.

No brainstorms, practices, meetings, briefings, careful analyses or orchestrated maneuvers can coerce him from her heart.

No physical pain, no focused thought, no lack of sleep can distract her dreams.

 

#

 

Three months after Scarif, she’s returned to the medbay. She’s too familiar with these walls, and mere seconds after 2-1B leaves, she sits up and swings her legs off the bed.

Her bare feet touch the cold floor and she stands on shaking legs.

“Hey, stop.”

She spins—or the ship does—she can’t really tell, but she thinks she’s facing the door now, and her knees are bumping the side of the bed, and somehow the room still whirls around her anyways.

He’s at her side before she can make any sense of it, easing her back into bed.

“You have a whole week to rest,” Cassian says.

Normal people, says a voice in the back of her mind, might say something like “hello,” “how are you,” “it’s good to see you,” or even, possibly, “I really missed you.”

But instead she protests.

“No, I don’t, there’s another—”

“Jyn.” The tone of a commanding officer. “You’re on leave for a week.”

She frowns. “You can’t give me orders.” She’s pretty sure that’s true. He does rank above her, but he isn’t her direct superior.

“I’m just the messenger,” he adds, voice a little softer.

“What? Sefla couldn’t visit me himself?” she mutters. Maybe beds aren’t so terrible. She settles back against the pillows. Pillows make the room stop spinning.

“I, uh.” He clears his throat. “I volunteered.”

“You can’t claim immunity if you _volunteered_ …” She sighs. Takes a good look at him now that he’s still and not moving. Or now that she’s not moving. Or—whatever.

His face is darker than she remembers: stubble shadowing his jaw, deep lines cutting across his forehead, bags like bruises under his eyes. But maybe that’s just because he’s watching her in _that_ way again, like she’s going to vanish right in front of him.

He’s still as beautiful as that moment on the tower.

Her hand, traitor that it is, wants to reach up and feel his stubble with her fingertips; her lips, with an agenda of their own, want to kiss the lines in his brow smooth. Her eyes stare into his, like she can will his exhaustion away, even though of course she knows she must look so much worse than him.

“What happened?” he says, when the silence between them stretches too thin.

_You’re very difficult to lose_ , she thinks, eyes still flitting over his face, like she could memorize every inch of it, like she hasn’t agonized over it for the last three months, seeing it every night when she closes her eyes. He’s still watching her that way, even though he’s the spy here, like he doesn’t know he’s infiltrated every level of her mind, her heart, her hope.

She sighs and shrugs.

“Jyn.” The tone of a frustrated but patient friend. “I talked to Sefla.”

_Yes,_ she thinks, _you already mentioned that._

“What happened?” he repeats.

“Didn’t Sefla tell you?”

He sighs and something behind his eyes shifts.

“I was captured. It was only a few days.” She shrugs again and this time her shoulder twinges a little. She must have winced because whatever lurks behind Cassian’s eyes softens for a moment.

But all he says is, “How?”

She doesn’t answer. The ‘how’ is not something she wants to tell him. The ‘how’ involves too little vigilance, too little energy, too little focus.

When she remains silent, he says, “You’re running yourself into the ground. You can’t take _every_ mission.”

“I can do it. I need to do it. I want to help. Why shouldn’t I?”

She hasn’t looked away, but now her eyes harden into a dare. She wants him to say it. She wants him to say, _because I need you to come back._ She can only explain such an impulse with whatever medicine must be coursing through her veins, causing the room to spin, bubbling up feelings that she’s been trying to drown.

“You’re no help to the rebellion like this.”

Now she breaks his gaze, feeling something sink in her chest. She clears her throat, examines the door.

“Why are you here?” Sefla’s perfectly capable of lecturing her on his own. He doesn’t need intelligence officers volunteering to do it.

“I wanted to see you.”

She takes a deep breath, but doesn’t look at him. “So you could lecture me yourself?”

The bed dips slightly and a calloused hand folds over hers.

“Please,” he says, so softly that she turns to face him, that she leans in a little closer. “Take care of yourself.”

She’s so close that her mind whispers to her what his lips might feel like, might taste like. And when she glances back at his eyes, she knows he’s caught her wondering.

She falls back against the pillows (the pillows with their special ability to make the room stop spinning).

“What were you doing talking to Sefla, anyways?”

If he’s disappointed, he doesn’t show it. In fact, he smiles at her question.

“It’s still in the works,” he says, a little hesitant, “but I have a new project that I’m going to need some help on. I need an assault crew on the ground.”

“You mean—”

He nods. “And Draven’s approved it.”

It takes her about ten seconds to realize she’s mirroring his grin. “What can you tell me?”

 

#

 

This is how it goes:

Jyn spends a week in the medbay, resting and listening to Cassian. She listens to him talk about mission details. She listens to him talk about where he’s been for the last three months. She listens to him talk about the paperwork hell that Draven put him through after medical released him. (The cane is gone, but a slight limp lingers.)

She listens to the nuances of his voice, memorizes it, sometimes closes her eyes as he talks to learn how it rises and falls without seeing his face, to hear between the words, to learn his pauses and his pace. She shouldn’t be doing this, but she thinks of the long weeks spent without him, and does it, and makes herself angry over it.

She listens to him speak as she drifts off to sleep, imagines his weight on the bed, his hand in hers, and when she wakes up to emptiness, she chastises herself, reminds herself what real loneliness is, and this is not it.

Jyn spends two weeks staking out a facility on a Mid-Rim planet, something with rocky mountains that clamber up to the sky and burrow deep into the earth. It’s some kind of mine and prison combination, that forces slave workers into cracks and crevices, fingers probing dark, spiky ridges for a special kind of mineral.

She prepares her team for infiltration on Cassian’s orders, noting the facility’s weaknesses, stocking up on weapons, plotting their assault. They set up a makeshift camp, hidden in a cave three peaks over; Cassian comes and goes, completing his own reconnaissance as an Imperial inspection officer. When he’s there, they pour over their datapads, throwing out suggestions, supplementing each other’s analysis with exchanged intel.

Maybe it was the week resting, maybe it’s the fresh air, maybe it’s a truth she doesn’t want to admit but knows deep down, but something is different. She feels better, feels like she could take on a whole army of ‘troopers. She thinks better, thinks up back up plans for back up plans. She sleeps better, sleeps deeply and without dreams.

Jyn spends a day raiding the facility.

This is something both familiar and new between them. What’s familiar are the moments of planning, of speeches, of the walk side by side towards some unknown fate that could be death and could be success. What’s familiar are the shared smiles at small victories, at major breakthroughs, at dangerous run-ins made safe because they have each other’s backs.

The mission has the team take down management, release the prisoners, help Cassian access data files. (What’s new is the absence of an elevator, of holding each other close, of breath mixing together.)

The mission goes off without any major hitches. (What’s new is that they walk away without a scratch.)

The mission ends. (What’s new is the sudden goodbye.)

#

Cassian leaves the first message, about three weeks after their joint mission ends. It’s short. “Aboard Nebulon-B. Stay safe. May the Force be with you.”

She doesn’t receive it until she herself is aboard the Nebulon-B, about four weeks after that. He is long gone by then, but a notification appears on her datapad when she connects to the network, and there it is, waiting for her. She reads the words several times over, fingers tracing the screen, trailing over the green light.

She wonders about it for awhile. (When was it that Draven and Mothma changed the rules?) She assumes the message was reviewed. (Does Draven trust them?) She asks Kes Dameron to show her how to leave her own messages. (Where can she do it? How does it work? Why don’t they cover it in training?)

Kes gives her a look, as she asks her questions, but he never voices his own—even as he explains the limitations and the hassle that only the most devoted of friends take the time to overcome. When he does tell her about his wife, she doesn’t ask him how they fight a war tied to each other, suspended away from each other, but he tells her that, too. Tells her about how he loves Shara Bey, how they hold onto their time together, how they share the belief that the war is bigger, how they come back to each other.

She thinks about that. She lays in bed and she thinks about it. She writes Cassian messages and she thinks about it. She searches every rebellion frigate, ship, and hangar she enters, searching for him, and thinks about it.

 

#

 

He finds her first, months later, at a small rebel outpost on rainy, jungle planet. She’s sitting at the back of what passes for the mess, a cozy room that probably couldn’t hold more than thirty. Despite her carefully chosen seat that gives her clear sight of the door, despite declining any kind of alcohol, despite limited participation in conversation, she still misses his entrance.

She’s turning to ask Kes a question when her eyes sweep across the room and spot him standing ten feet away, wearing a new rain jacket she doesn’t recognize and dripping wet from the monsoon outside.

Between spotting him and embracing him, she registers only: the scraping of her chair against the floor, the bodies she pushes through, the smell of the rain still lingering in his soaked hair.

His hands flutter awkwardly at her shoulders, her back, and then the surprise evaporates and she feels his arms wrap around her. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since they last saw each other and she doesn’t know how long it’s been since she launched herself into his arms.

When she finally pulls away, it’s only to look up at him. Rain water presses his hair flat to his head, drips down the side of his face (it almost reminds her of Eadu), but he smiles at her and she’s so close she can see the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the dimples in his cheeks. She grins back, and she thinks about what Kes told her, and she thinks about how much she’s wanted to close the distance between them.

“Oh, I brought something for you,” he says, and the moment is gone, and they drift apart as he opens his bag. She holds onto her smile for a little longer, but it’s a little smaller, a little duller.

She squints at the tin box he pulls out of his bag and hands to her.

“It’s the candy you mentioned,” he says hesitantly, when she doesn’t recognize it. She flips open the lid and that’s when she remembers: an apartment she used to call home, sticky hands, her father’s smiling face as they tried different flavors together.

She barely remembers talking about it (it must have been during that time after Scarif, when they’d swapped stories about their early childhoods, in efforts to find something happier to latch onto), but that’s not really what she thinks about. She closes the lid and stares up at him.

“Where did you get this?” she asks. She doesn’t wait for him to answer. “Were you on Coruscant?”

The look on his face is answer enough for her.

A different sort of storm hovers on the horizon, and biting her lip, she turns on her heel and leaves.

The door slams shut behind her, but, disappointingly, the rain drowns out the bang. She paces on the covered patio wrapping around the building, stomping and looking for something to kick and not finding anything. She kneels on the edge of the porch, staring out into the jungle, watching the water weigh down leaves and watching the wind whip around branches. But for all the buffeting, the trees stay rooted where they are, stuck, cemented, holding fast.

Something is cold in her hands, and she looks down and sees her fingers clutching the tin of candies.

Coruscant. She didn’t know (she never knows). He could have died (she wouldn’t have known). If something happens… (she wants to know).

Hesitating, she opens the box again. Looks at all the different colors. Tries to remember which one was her favorite, but she can’t. She picks out a purple one at random and tries it: too sweet. Picks up a yellow one: too sour.

She hears his footsteps behind her, feels him sit down next to her.

“I wish I had known,” she says after a moment. The candy sticks to her teeth.

“I know,” he says. He’s close enough that their shoulders touch. She offers him a blue candy, and though he eyes it skeptically, he pops it into his mouth.

“What do you think?”

He swallows. “It’s very sweet.”

She chuckles. “Yea. They all are.”

“You don’t like them?”

She shrugs. “They’re not as good as I remember.”

“I guess that happens.”

They share the candies anyways, watching the rain. It’s warm enough here that it takes awhile for the excess water to feel cold, but Cassian is still soaked and Jyn’s clothes are wet from when she hugged him. Without thinking about it, she scoots a little closer; distantly, she feels his arm wrap around her shoulders; unconsciously, she leans her head on his shoulder.

“How did you even remember…?”

He shrugs the shoulder not supporting her head. “I’m a spy. It’s my job.”

She snorts.

“You know…” He takes a deep breath. “There’s a way you could know. If something happened.”

She tilts her head so her chin rests on his shoulder and she watches his face.

“I could list you as my next of kin.”

Her head lifts up off his shoulder and she pulls back. He shifts to face her, his features knitting together in that familiar look.

“It was just an idea,” he says quickly. “If you don’t…”

Speechless, words stuck between bits of candy and chattering teeth, she takes his hand instead and holds on tight. She’s not sure if she’s holding it for him or for her, if his hand is her lifeline to keep her moored, to prevent her from whirling away, but she clutches it without needing to know why.

She nods. Wonders which flavor his lips taste like. Wonders if she’ll finally find out.

And that is when she feels the sneeze coming, barely looks away in time.

“Come on,” he says, pulling her to her feet. “Let’s get inside.”

Her mother’s crystal warm against her chest, she can’t help but think the universe is warning her.

 

#

 

Jyn receives the notification after her latest mission. The rest of the ship is mostly sleeping, resting. And the silence is loud in her ears.

_… missing … last seen … presumed captured or dead …_

She bangs her fist against the armrest and doesn’t register the slap of metal beneath her hand. Nor does she register it as she bangs on the door to Sefla’s cabin.

She vows, she’s going to find him.

 

#

 

She takes cover in a back alley behind a factory billowing smoke, trapped in a maze of streets and warehouses, and waits for the planted bombs to go off.

They’ve underestimated the Imperial reinforcements. She isn’t sure who remains, who fights on. She’s so close, she can see the wire fence of the prison just a block away, when five troopers corner her.

Her ankle hurts from when she twisted it, jumping off a ladder. Her lungs ache from gasping for breath in the smog-thick air. Her mind is weary.

She turns and faces them, already clutching a blaster in one hand (how many bolts left?) and her truncheon in the other, for all the good it will do her when she doesn’t even have an element of surprise, when she’s already broken and beaten, when they’re raising blasters towards her. Even though she knows this will be her last stand, she cocks her head to the side and glares them down, like they don’t know what’s coming.

They don’t.

Jyn Erso wins: ‘troopers toppled, lying in a heap on the ground around her. But wins don’t come without risk. The blaster wound in her side burns. She staggers to the ground. Leans against the wall of the factory. Closes her eyes.

Regrets everything.

 

#

 

Somewhere far away, a siren blares.

Somewhere close by, footsteps scrape against gravel.

Somewhere in her head, a voice says, “ _Everything I did, I did for the rebellion._ ”

She pushes herself up, groaning.

“ _I couldn’t face myself if I gave up now._ ”

Above, she sees lights flashing across the buildings. The siren screams louder, now that she’s regained consciousness. And in the street in front of her, prisoners race by, oblivious to the woman curled up in the shadows.

She grits her teeth. Takes a deep breath. Braces herself.

She stands.

The wound in her side roars, louder than anything. But there’s something that hurts more.

She still doesn’t know if she’ll find him inside that prison. She doesn’t know if he’s alive or dead. She doesn’t know what might have existed between them. She’s avoided the answer to that over the last year thinking it would protect both of them. Thinking it would hurt less to lose a comrade than a lover.

She was wrong.

What hurts more than the pain raging up her side is knowing she could have left him behind thinking he’s alone in the universe, thinking he’s not enough when he’s always been the opposite, always filled her, overflowing so she couldn’t breathe or think or feel.

He could die (could be dead) without ever knowing the truth about what he is.

She staggers through the crowd the wrong way, towards the jail, keeping her eyes on the spiky wire, reeling herself towards it. He’s always come back for her; now she does the same for him. One hand clutches her kyber crystal as she limps, praying.

Blood soaks through the front of her shirt; she presses her hand into her side and ignores how little an effect this actually has. It’s not until she hears his voice shouting her name that she reconsiders the consequences of severe blood loss.

Her mind thinks she’s back on Jedha, on Eadu, that he’s shouting her name over and over. She’d spent so many years under different aliases; she’d almost died as Liana Hallik on Wobani. And then all of a sudden, in a matter of a week, Cassian says her name, shouts her name, over and over, as if to make up for lost time, as if to remind the universe who she is, as if to remind her who she is.

Someone grabs her arm, and she halfheartedly wrenches her free hand from his grip, but then hands are turning her around.

Before she really gets a good look at him, he presses her against him.

“You’re okay,” he says into her hair. “I found you.”

“No,” she says into his shirt. “ _I_ found _you_.”

“Okay.”

Still tangled in each other’s arms, they shuffle to the side of the road and collapse onto each other. She isn’t sure who it is that groans as they fall (maybe both).

A shadow falls over them. She hears Kes shout, “Can I get a medic?”

She passes out.

 

#

 

She really is tired of hospital rooms.

At least when she sits up, this one doesn’t spin. The ache in her side protests only a little. Blinking in the bright light, she looks around.

Only one other bed: empty, but the sheets are crumpled. No doctors or droids in sight. Only one sound, that of running water, coming from the ‘fresher.

When she puts her feet on the ground, when she stands, when she takes a few steps towards the door, she feels okay. Except for the taste of bacta in her mouth, she feels pretty good, for someone with a hole in her side. It does sting a little as she crosses the room, but that deeper ache still calls for her attention.

She has to find him.

The familiarity of everything reminds her of Scarif, and groaning, she thinks of time spent negotiating with Mothma, tracking him down, convincing them to let her see him.

Surely it must count for something, that they list each other as next of kin?

With a sigh, she reaches out to open the door.

“Jyn?”

She whirls around towards the ‘fresher.

“Cassian?” She puts her hand to her head, but she still feels fine. Just confused. “What are you…?”

What does it matter? She’d made a decision, the last time she was conscious, regarding what she would do if she found him alive.

It takes five steps, a second, a blink, to close the distance between them.

She kisses him.

He hesitates, and she starts to pull away. Has she been wrong this whole time? Has she waited too long?

And then he leans forward, following, and finds her again.

All thoughts of waiting flee. What had she ever waited for? Only a fool would wait to breathe. She kisses him, tastes him, inhales him. He is everything and there’s so much yet to learn about him. Jyn has never been one to bother with precision until now, until she must determine the precise angle of his jaw, how to climb it with her lips; the precise location of the skin on his neck that produces a hitch in his breath, a sigh, a moan; all the ways to love him wait before her in a map on his skin and she’ll chart the course with fervor and devotion.

“Wait, wait, Jyn—” he murmurs beneath her lips.

“I’m done waiting,” she answers, breathless. She isn’t sure when or how they wound up on his bed.

“But your side—”

“It’s fine.” She leans down to retrace the path up his neck.

“Okay, but _my_ arm…”

She pauses. Leans back. Re-evaluates her surroundings. She’s straddling him, pinning him with her legs, his robe pushed off his shoulders, revealing his hospital gown. His arm is in a sling (also askew now, and with his newfound freedom he adjusts it).

She sighs.

“Sorry to inconvenience you,” he says, failing to suppress a laugh.

Biting her lip, she shifts to the side of the bed. “What happened?”

He stares at her and the glint in his eye makes her uneasy. “I was captured. It was only for a few days.”

She huffs. “We’ll come back to that,” she attempts to threaten. The effect is lost as she wipes her mouth. “Why are we in the same room?”

His face twitches into a neutral expression, and of course, now he takes out the mask. “Must be the next of kin designation.”

She stares back at him, and he returns it.

“You made a deal.”

He shrugs, but she thinks she can see the chips in his mask, little wrinkles at the corner of his eyes.

She pulls back, shifts down into the chair beside his bed. Her heart is pounding, the month after Scarif replaying in her head. The months they’d spent separated.

“Hey,” he says softly, shifting on the bed so he sits in front of her, leaning towards her. “No, it’s not like that.”

When she looks up, the mask is gone, the trace of amusement is gone, all replaced by his usual look of concern.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she snaps. Concern gives way to hurt and confusion. “Like you think I’m going to run.”

He looks up at her, eyes run across her body, and she realizes she is standing, realizes that any normal person might read her stance as a prelude to retreat.

“I’m sorry…” She steps forward, takes his free hand, leans her forehead against his. “I don’t really know what I’m doing. But I’m not… I don’t want to leave.”

“I know,” he says. “I just… want you to be happy.”

It’s her side that has the injury, but all she feels is an ache in her chest. All her words congregate there, inside her heart, afraid to leave. She clears her throat. “You. You make me happy.”

He lets go of her hand so he can cup her cheek and tilt her face to look into his eyes.

“I made my deal months ago. It’s finished. It’s paid.”

It finally clicks in her head. He’d said _I can’t go back to the work I was doing before_ , but then what else had he done in the past year?

“You renegotiated with Mothma and Draven?”

“I’m pretty persuasive.”

“So, you’re…”

“Done with intelligence. Ready to captain my own unit. Would you…”

She kisses him again, although he makes it difficult when he smiles. She breaks away and looks at him.

“I love you,” she blurts out, surprising herself more than him. (Most likely.)

His eyebrows rocket to his hairline. (Maybe not.) “You… are you sure?”

She frowns, hating that he could possibly doubt it. “Yes, I’m sure.”

He plays with her hair, twining it between his fingers, as his eyes bore into her, as if he can try to read the truth of it in her face. (He probably can.)

But she moves forward anyways, onto the bed. “If you don’t believe me, let me convince you.” She kisses him yet again (as she gladly would, over and over and over). “I’m pretty persuasive, myself.”

“Jyn. We’re in the medbay.”

“What use is a private room if we can’t—”

“I love you, too,” he says, and she stops and stares at him, amazed, even though she’s seen it on his face constantly over the last year. “But I would like to wait just a little longer.”

She huffs, but nods. “Fine.”

He tilts his head to the side, thinking. “Then again… you were making a compelling argument.”

Grinning, she continues.

 

#

 

_Expectations:_

She will mess this up.

He will want to leave.

They will die.

 

_Reality:_

She discovers him in hangars, in ports, in cities across the galaxy. When they are together, the rest of the world goes quiet, and all that exists is what floats between them. All that exists are his lips on her skin and his voice in her ear. All that exists are the confessions doled out in the dark, the comfort shared, the care and concern offered up unconditionally.

She discovers him on Hoth, bundled in his blue parka, and she teases him because _isn’t this like your home planet?_ He pulls her close and his breath is hot against her ear as he asks, _Do you have any better ideas to stay warm?_ She discovers him on Endor, eyes dark and far away even after the Death Star disintegrates into fireworks above them, and they spend a night separate from the celebration, their own relief soft and slow and solemn as they reconcile their fears of tomorrow against its new promises.

She discovers him for the rest of their future. As long as they live, he surprises her with something new: unrestrained wedding vows adorned with happy tears; unrestrained glee when she tells him he’s going to be a father; unrestrained songs dedicated to the babe growing in her belly, swinging in his arms, laughing in their home. (No one believes her that Cassian Andor not only is capable of singing, but in fact does it often. He prefers it that way.) They give their daughter a brother and she watches them grow, her _family_ , the word glowing in her heart.

Through all of it, she shines with the most persistent happiness of her soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


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